Either Way, You Might Get Famous!
May 25, 2014 10:51 AM   Subscribe

Ever wonder if you could take down a famous rapper in a fight? Grantland offers a thoughtful analysis. "You’d likely win this fight if it managed to come off, but I’d sidestep it because let’s say you trip over Puff’s teeny-tiny teeth and fall and hit your head on the concrete and knock yourself out or whatever, he is absolutely going to celebrate by doing that Diddy Bop dance he’s done for the last 60 years. You can’t risk that. There’s no recovering from that. There’s no recovering from being the guy in the WSHH knockout Puff Daddy Diddy Bop dance video."
posted by scaryblackdeath (26 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wanted to hate this, but it was so much fighty fun. Someone should do this for every genre of music, every cultural corner. They should do it for scientists and news presenters.

I mean - whoever wrote "Bronson’s father is Albanian, which means Bronson is half-Albanian, which means FUCK THAT. The only person capable of defeating Albanians is Liam Neeson, and you’re no Liam Neeson" is just hilarious.
posted by zoo at 11:02 AM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


What about Macklemore? Can I fight him?


Please?
posted by louche mustachio at 11:21 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I prefer the "most dangerous game" version of this daydream.

Ice-T: Remember that one movie he was in with Rutger Hauer in which Hauer and his friends were hunting him? They had guns and ATVs and racism and they still couldn’t get him.

If Nas was being hunted by Alan Rickman Nas might thin out Rickman's goons with cunning traps made of whittled bamboo, but in the end I don't think that would be enough to save him from the avatar of withering contempt.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:22 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Macklemore is admittedly a notable absence from this list. As is (a friend pointed out) the lack of LL Cool J... but I feel like that's kind of a foregone conclusion. Dude's mom encouraged him to go knock people out. What the hell kind of parenting is that? And who would try to fight him?
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:23 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


I'm pretty confident I could beat ODB in a fight.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:29 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was J. Cole before the rapper was born. I owe him a thrashing for ruining my name.
posted by wintermind at 11:49 AM on May 25, 2014


I'm pretty confident I could beat ODB in a fight.

Well, he has been dead for ten years, so I am sure you could.
posted by louche mustachio at 11:58 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


I could also easily take Eazy-E.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:05 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I could also easily take Eazy-E.

Dude was like 2 feet tall. You could step on him.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 12:23 PM on May 25, 2014


Lil Wayne might be more of a wait-and-see situation.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:45 PM on May 25, 2014


Reminds me of the Rollins vs. Danzig fight scenarios my friends and i would argue out as kids. (Before taht one video where Danzig gets knocked down by one sucker punch.)
posted by Space Coyote at 1:11 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I like that there isn't a single member of Wu-Tang on this list, because fighting the Clan isn't really even worth discussing.

Also I am imagining a fight with MF Doom where he accidentally kills you with a toxic weed cloud without noticing, like a sort of hashish Drunken Master.
posted by selfnoise at 1:23 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


> Rollins vs. Danzig

Rollins would win, marking entry #494720 in the book of No Justice in the World.

Iggy Pop: you would win if you could outlast him, which you can't. 85% chance Iggy Pop would knock you out.
posted by postcommunism at 3:36 PM on May 25, 2014


> Rollins vs. Danzig

Nope. Simultaneous double KO so fierce that the little cartoon birdies twittering around their heads also start fighting and knock each other out.

Meanwhile, at the same moment but hundreds of miles away, Anthony Kiedis falls over for no apparent reason, hits his head on a pile of completely undeserved Grammys, and is also rendered even more unconscious than usual.

Humanity wins... for now...
posted by hap_hazard at 3:45 PM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


(Before that one video where Danzig gets knocked down by one sucker punch.)

Despite the protestations of the girl in the video, that was not a sucker punch or a cheap shot.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 4:01 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


I like that there isn't a single member of Wu-Tang on this list, because fighting the Clan isn't really even worth discussing.

You didn't actually sleep last night -- the Wu knocked you into yesterday for thinking about fighting them today.
posted by Etrigan at 4:31 PM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


Legend has it they ain't nuthin' ta fuck wit'.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:42 PM on May 25, 2014


And really, why would you?
posted by louche mustachio at 4:43 PM on May 25, 2014


so... punchable...
posted by louche mustachio at 4:48 PM on May 25, 2014




We are probabilists, living in the shadow of the great Kolmogorov. Subjective probability? Frequentist probability? Imagine the belief that you have of your ability to take someone on a fight, or imagine an infinite sequence of you, each fighting in a logically independent fashion that rapper, infinitely, and at the end, the ratio of wins. Either way, there is no meaning to negative probability.

Probably, they wanted to do a meta-analysis, and get a risk ratio.
posted by curuinor at 7:36 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Now, Dirac mentioned that the negative of a probability should not be considered as nonsense, but as a well-defined quantity, akin to a negative of a monetary quantity. Certainly, the probability above 1 may make sense in this domain: it is the probability of DMX killing you, revivifying you, and killing you however so many times in ordered fashion.
posted by curuinor at 7:46 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Or the probability that in the act of killing you in this timeline, he also killed you in several adjacent timelines where no fight occurred.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:51 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I loved this when I saw it. I think the only version of Wu-Tang discussion that would work would be a survey where you enter data (height, weight, age, level of Tiger Style mastered) and the formula tells you how many copies of you each member could kill at one time in a giant melee. Then again, why would you enter a fight against someone named Master Killah? I mean, really?

Also, the DMX entry was pure truth, and as such, has a platonic beauty to it.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:01 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also, the TI entry:

He has an unsettling gaze. There’s evil in him. He’ll hurt you. And he’s gonna like doing it. Don’t do it. Don’t fight T.I.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:04 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Eh, this was dumb but I'll let it slide since he helped bring us Bun B's Rap Coloring and Activity Book, and generally seems like a cool dude.
posted by cashman at 7:23 AM on May 26, 2014


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